Jon Anderson Talks Rick Wakeman, Trevor Rabin, Football

A couple of months ago, Jon Anderson told CBS Local that he was working on a project with fellow Yes alumni Rick Wakeman and Trevor Rabin. In a follow up interview this week, he said that the project is still in the works.

“Rick’s recording as we speak,” Anderson says. “He said he’d send me some music this month or next month. And then I would send it to Trevor. We’d actually written a couple of songs, me and Trevor, and me and Rick have written a couple.” Last time, Anderson said he couldn’t imagine an Anderson/Wakeman/Rabin tour, but he may have warmed up to the idea. If they do tour, fans shouldn’t expect a Yes “greatest hits” show.

“If we make music that we really like, and we put it out there, we’ve got a good fan base who wants to see us do new music… I don’t think we’d want to go out just doing old music, I don’t see the point. I’d rather go out there and do some new music, of course, you’d do old stuff that people want to hear. But you don’t rely on that as your show. You want to take some new music out there and have an adventure.”

Jon’s most recent musical adventure has been “Brasilian Music Sound,” a tribute to the 2014 World Cup, being held in Brazil. With the Cup still a year and a half away, is this song a sort of campaign to get invited to the big event? “You hope something like that might happen, you never know. It’d be amazing! I’d love to be there.”

As it turns out, he has a long history with the sport: “I come from a small town in England called Accrington. Football was my world: I was a ball boy and a mascot for Accrington Stanley.” But now that he’s a U.S. resident, he also follows American football. “I’m a 49er fan. My wife Jane told me, ‘If you want to be with me, you have to support the 49ers.’ I didn’t know what the hell American football was about! The game keeps stopping! In soccer, it keeps moving! But now I love it: both the NFL and college football.”

However, the fact that Americans aren’t interested in soccer mystifies him: “It’s a pity that America isn’t as involved in soccer as it should be. There’s a lot of young people playing soccer. The U.S. women’s team, they were brilliant, they played great soccer at the Olympics. In four or five more years, American might become a worldwide soccer force and then Americans will be more interested.”